Code of the Street
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Anderson, Elijah
W.W. Norton & Company. August. 352p.
ISBN: 0-393-04023-2. $25.95

Code of the Street is not only a troubling portrait of an underclass in serious crisis, it’s also a call for pragmatic, rational public policies to repair a socioeconomic structure torn apart by the loss of good industrial jobs in the inner city. Anderson, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that building human capital in these communities is fundamental and must involve offering effective education and job training for the needy to satisfactorily compete in today’s global marketplace.

Cookie Cutter
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Anthony, Sterling
One World Ballantine. November. 352p.
ISBN: 0-345-42604-5. $24

This psychological suspense novel from first-time novelist Sterling Anthony is about the Shaw family living in a small Alabama town. The story is charged with violence, deception, family secrets, and a homicide lieutenant hunting an elusive killer.

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience
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Appiah, Kwame Anthony and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Editors)
Perseus. November. 2144p.
ISBN: 0-465-00071-1. $89.95

This one-volume encyclopedia compiled by Harvard scholars covers the scope of history from slavery, the civil rights movement, African American literature, music, and art, to African civilizations and the black experience in countries such as France and Russia.

Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings
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Armstrong, Louis
Oxford University Press. November. 288p.
ISBN: 0-19-511958-4. $25

This collection of previously unpublished writings from jazz trumpeter Armstrong (1900-71), which has been edited by Thomas Brothers, offers a glimpse of Armstrong's childhood, musical influences, rise to fame, his life traveling as a musician, his role during the Civil Rights Movement, and his final years.

Equal Justice Under Law: An Autobiography
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Baker Motley, Constance
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. September. 288p.
ISBN: 0-374-52618-4. $14

She was the key attorney assisting Thurgood Marshall at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and argued many cases before the Supreme Court. She was made famous when she represented James Meredith in his bid to attend University of Mississippi. Baker Motley became Manhattan Borough president (NY) and a U.S. District Court judge. Her memoirs give a detailed account of the civil rights struggle as she experienced it.

Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women's Consciousness
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Banks, Ingrid
New York University Press. December. 192p.
ISBN: 0814713378. $17.50

From interviews with over 50 women, from teens to seniors, Banks reveals the different ideas Black women have about race, gender, sexuality, beauty, and power through their discussions of hair. Banks follows the trends from long hair of the 60s, Afros of the early 70s, to bobs of the 80s, and fuchsia hair color of the 90s.

At the Full and Change of the Moon
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Brand, Dionne
Grove. October. 304p.
ISBN: 0-8021-1649-3. $24

Brand, a poet and novelist, writes about six generations of Africans living on the island of Trinidad from 1824. Marie-Ursule, queen of a secret society of militant slaves called the Sans Peur Regimen, plots a mass suicide on the plantation. She couldn’t sacrifice her daughter, Bola, however, so she escapes and later has children who are eventually scattered across the Caribbean, North America, and Europe.

Black Lawyers, White Courts: The Soul of South African Law
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Broun, Kenneth S.
Ohio University Press. November. 304p.
ISBN: 0-81214-1286-8. $19.95

Broun has traveled to South Africa since 1986 to conduct programs in trial advocacy training through the Black Lawyers Association of South Africa. He has included narratives of oral interviews of 27 of the lawyers who fought the system in their struggle against apartheid. They speak of their lives and family backgrounds, education, careers, and especially, their vision of the future.